Page 10 of Fought and Found

My ship is fine. Shields held. The Petal has taken worse.

My hand goes to the comms panel. Reflex. Morrison’s voice in my head —don’t play hero, Knight— and for three seconds I want to hear the real version so badly my fingers ache. Morrison would know what to do. Morrison always knows what to do. That’s the deal: I fly intotrouble and she talks me out of it, and between the two of us we’ve kept me alive for twelve years.

But the mercs found us on a route only OOPS dispatch and SRS knew. Open comms in contested space is a beacon, and a beacon is an invitation, and Morrison didn’t train me to send invitations to people who want my cargo. I pull my hand back. Later. When the channel’s clean and the route’s secure and I’ve worked out how three unmarked vessels knew exactly where to find a courier running dark.

Morrison is going to be furious. Morrison being furious means Morrison is alive and paying attention, and right now that’s the best thing I’ve got.

Which means he’s stranded. On my ship. The SRS agent who boarded without permission, tried to confiscate my cargo, wrapped his tail around my waist like it was the most natural thing in the world, and is currently standing in my corridor with torn tactical gear and gold eyes and a voice that drops register when he’s impressed and I need to stop cataloguing him like he’s a manifest entry.

“Your vessel is non-operational,” I say, because someone has to state the obvious and it might as well be me.

“I am aware.” Clipped. Cold. The tone of a man who has just lost his ship and would rather die than discuss it. He holsters the weapon — a sleek SRS-issue sidearm, no sticker, no name, no personality whatsoever — and turns to face me fully.

The tactical suit is torn across his left shoulder. Not a clean tear — jagged, the parting gift of the last merc’s boarding blade, the one he took hand-to-hand at the starboard junction, and through the gap I can see skin. Deep crimson, the color of wine held up to firelight, and across it, geometric black markings. Sharp-edged. Precise. Running along the curve of muscle like they were drawn with intent,disappearing under the torn fabric at an angle that suggests the pattern continues across his chest, down his ribs, further. The dark velvet fuzz covers the skin between the markings — short, dense, catching the corridor light in a way that makes it look soft enough to —

My fingers twitch.

The reflex is immediate, involuntary, and completely unacceptable. A pull in the tendons of my right hand, a ghost-touch impulse toward the torn edge of his gear where crimson skin and dark fuzz meet damaged fabric. My body wants to close the distance. Press fingertips to the place where the marking curves over the hard ridge of his shoulder. Find out if the fuzz is as soft as it looks.

The timing is catastrophic.

I fold my arms. Tight. Lock my fingers against my own ribs where they can’t do anything stupid.

He notices. Of course he notices — those gold eyes miss nothing, track everything, file it all away in whatever meticulous system he uses to keep the world at arm’s length. His nostrils flare on a short inhale, like he’s caught something in the air that wasn’t there before, and his gaze drops to my folded arms and back up with the precision of someone correcting a navigational error.

Neither of us says anything about it. Morrison would call this a professional complication in a tone that means get out immediately.

“Sprout, damage report on the Petal.”

“Shields at 68% and recovering. Minor scoring on the port hull. The fairy lights are intact, which I mention because I know your priorities.”

“And our guests?”

“Unconscious. Stun duration at this charge level is approximately forty minutes. I would recommend removal before they wake up and become conversational.”

The Xarthian is already moving. He grabs the nearest merc by the collar — one-handed, combat hand, claws extended, like the body weighs nothing — and drags him toward the portside airlock. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t wait for instruction. Hauls all four, one by one, the muscles in his back working under the torn fabric with an efficiency that is purely mechanical and I am not watching. I am monitoring the tactical situation. The tactical situation happens to include the way his shoulders roll when he lifts dead weight and the dark geometric lines that shift with the movement, visible through the ripped suit, and the fuzz along the back of his neck that’s still slightly raised from the stun bolt’s static discharge.

I am monitoring the tactical situation very thoroughly.

He seals the clamps. The whole operation takes less than two minutes. He turns back to me, not even breathing hard, and the look on his face is pure professional assessment. No gratitude for the assist. No acknowledgment that I just saved his life with a stun bolt two and a half inches from his jaw. Just those gold eyes, flat and evaluative, like I’m a piece of equipment he’s deciding whether to requisition.

Useful. I file that under things I didn’t ask him to do and decide not to examine why it matters.

His hand goes to his comm unit. I see it — the automatic reach, fingers finding the device on his belt with the muscle memory of a man who has filed nine years of status reports at the intervals his employer requires. His thumb settles on the transmit key.

He doesn’t press it.

The hesitation is brief. Two seconds, maybe less. His jaw locks, his gaze cuts to me — fast, assessing, the calculation happening behind his eyes in real time — and then his hand drops. The comm unit stays silent. Whatever protocol demands he report — his ship destroyed, mercs neutralised, the container still in my cargo bay — he’s chosen not to. Not yet.

I file this. I don’t know what it means. I know that a man with a 98% compliance rate just chose not to comply, and he did it in the two seconds after looking at me.

“Good. Set a course for —”

“Your shield harmonics are running 3% below optimal.”

I stop. Turn back to him. He’s moved to the nav console — my nav console — and is studying the display with the expression of a man who has found something personally offensive. One claw extended, the right hand, the combat hand, tapping my screen like he owns it. His nostrils flare once — a sharp, involuntary expansion that he kills in the same breath — and I watch him angle his jaw a fraction away from me, like he’s trying to get upwind of something he doesn’t want to smell. My hair is half out of its braid from the fight. Sweat and ozone and peppermint. Whatever he’s picking up, he didn’t go looking for it.

“Excuse me?”